A SteamVR beta update today improved tracking when used with Oculus Quest via Oculus Link.

Oculus Link allows Quest to be used just like a PC VR headset. While this makes it easy to play Oculus PC games, it also allows Quest to be used seamlessly with SteamVR.

Released in beta today, version 1.10.31 of SteamVR makes adjustments to tracking prediction when Quest is used with SteamVR. Specifically, Valve says the adjustment reduces positional latency, which means that players should see less latency when moving their head through space (as opposed to simply rotating in place). Rotational latency, it seems, continues to work as expected.

The patch notes for the update say the improvement was made by “fixing prediction.” Predicting the movement of the headset is key to reducing apparent latency in VR, but if the prediction is off it can make things feel even worse. SteamVR may have been applying Rift-like prediction to Quest, but as the rendering pipeline for Quest on Oculus Link is quite different, this may not have been as accurate as it could have been.

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SteamVR users can access this beta update today by right-clicking on SteamVR in their Steam Library, selecting the ‘Betas’ tab, and choosing ‘SteamVR Beta Update’ in the drop-down list. Unless any major bugs are discovered, the update will eventually roll out to the main branch of SteamVR which will automatically be deployed to all users.

Valve has been steadily updating SteamVR lately, including the release of a new and improved VR dashboard earlier this month.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • impurekind

    Good good

  • Bro-tastic

    Loki Valve and Oculus built the vr platform

  • Xron

    Great news.

  • PJ

    I find it quite amazing that Valve, a direct competitor to Oculus in both hardware and as a storefront, keep improving Oculus headsets tracking and performance..

    Valve and steam as a whole get some flack, but well played

    • Lars Christensen

      It’s the Steam storefront, that’s by far the biggest surce of income for Valve. They don’t want to prevent anyone from using Steam the best way. The competitors customers are always welcome :)

      • PJ

        Can’t argue with that

    • Because Valve competes with Oculus on the store not on the hardware

      • Lola

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      • PJ

        They are in direct competition, they both have HMDs on the market, and very slim market at that

  • Joaquin A Guevara

    I never noticed latency, but I will try and compare.

  • Good job, Valve